


A Temper To Match His Hand

by mustangsgloves



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-04-05
Packaged: 2018-05-17 12:35:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5869810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mustangsgloves/pseuds/mustangsgloves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>5 times Roy Mustang's emotions got the better of him, and 5 times Riza Hawkeye acted accordingly</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Somebody I Used To Know

Maes Hughes likes to think he knows his Roy Mustang better than Roy Mustang knows himself.   Well of course that is specifically the part of Roy that knows this young soldier before them. Whatever feelings he has for this girl, this short blonde haired brown-eyed sniping prodigy, were definitely something more than friends, Maes could tell that much for sure.

 

Why else would his eyes be filled with so much pain at seeing the young cadet who had just saved their skins?

 

Glancing at Roy, Maes wondered if it was possible to actually see that much pain in one man’s expression. It scared him, honestly, to see his generally stoic and resolute friend so… _undone_.

 

Turning his gaze to the young woman before them, Maes tried to break the stony silence filling the space between the three.

 

“Thank you,” he said. The woman turned her amber gaze to the bespectacled man. Her eyes mirrored Roy’s, inexplicable pain and – was that regret?

 

“Don’t worry about it, sir.” Her voice is quiet, soft; it doesn’t fit their surroundings. Shrugging her response off, because _no_ , he _will_ worry about it, this girl just saved his _life_ , Maes continues.

 

“Do you have a name, cadet?”

 

“Hawkeye, sir,” she replies, gaze turning down to look at the ever-present sand beneath them.

 

“Riza Hawkeye.”

 

Maes jolts at the sound of his friend’s voice. Whipping his head to look at the younger man, he is shocked to see that his friend’s expression has not changed from pure despair, save for the newfound _affection_ in his eyes.

 

The way the woman’s name had rolled off his friend’s lips was laced with regret, as was evident on his face. His brows were furrowed and his lips were pursed. The cadet, Hawkeye, looks up to meet Roy’s gaze, and Maes sees similar emotions reflected on her young face. _Yes_ , he decides, that _is_ regret.

 

“Just Cadet Hawkeye, Major,” the woman grounds out. Roy’s face falls and a blank mask covers what strong emotions had been present mere seconds before.

 

“My apologies.”

 

Maes doesn’t know how much more of this pained and remorseful interaction he can take. He abandons his rational thought and goes with his gut.

 

Mustering the most positive voice he can, he interjects, “I take it you know Roy here?” The amber gaze turns to him.

 

“We know each other, yes.” The way she says it makes it seem like she’s trying her damned hardest to block out old memories.

 

“Her father was my alchemy teacher,” Roy adds, still looking at Hawkeye.

 

This is usually the point where Maes would tease Roy about something, maybe a childhood crush, but it seems like that may strike a chord too close to home and very inappropriate for their current situation. Silence settles in once again.

 

“You never told me you enrolled in the Academy,” his voice is quiet, Maes swears he hasn’t heard his friend so dejected.

 

“You weren’t home,” Hawkeye counters back.

 

“You could’ve written,” Roy replies.

 

“You would’ve stopped me,” she says.

 

“Damn right I would’ve stopped you!” Roy’s mask falls and the pain returns. Hawkeye looks surprised, but her own mask comes and she appears to be completely calm. Maes doesn’t believe that though. Her eyes betray her, a sea of emotions swirls in her gaze.

 

“You’re only nineteen Riza, why the hell are you out of the Academy,” it’s not so much of a question as it is a statement.

 

Hawkeye appears to steel herself and replies to Roy’s tirade.

 

“They needed snipers, sir,” Roy winces at the honorific. “I was the top of my class,” Maes hears no pride in that statement, but he guesses there might have been if the situation were different.

 

“You’re nineteen,” Roy repeats.

 

“You’re twenty-one,” Hawkeye fires back.

 

“You’re too young,” as Roy says it, Maes hears the telltale crack that signifies that his friend is close to crying.

 

“I turn twenty in a month.”

 

Out of everything, this is the statement that seems to send Roy over the edge. His face contorts and he lets out a strangled yell. Maes adverts his eyes, it doesn’t feel right to watch as his friend turns and punches a derelict building beside them. In doing so, he catches sight of Hawkeye’s gaze, which is fixed on Roy.

 

Her amber eyes hold a different type of pain, not regretful so much as pained affection for the young man before her. She extends her arm as if to place her hand on his shoulder, and then remembers who they now are, Major Mustang and Cadet Hawkeye, no longer the friendly children they once were.

 

Roy is breathing hard and he is resting his forehead on the broken stone side of the building as he cradles his hand. Maes sees the blood dripping from his injured knuckles, but doesn’t say anything. Hawkeye seems to have a different idea.

 

“My apologies, sirs,” she says as she adjusts the rifle strap on her shoulder. “I should be returning to my post.”

 

As she turns to go, she seems to decide something. Maes watches with so many conflicting emotions as the young woman _does_ reach out and rest her hand on Roy’s shoulder as she says one last thing.

 

“You should get your hand checked Major,” her voice is hard, her mask is in place, and once again her eyes are betraying her; they’re full of tears. “You can’t risk an infection.”

 

With that, she takes her hand off of his shoulder and turns, her anonymous cloak flowing behind her as she walks off back towards her post.

 

Maes is left with his friend and more questions than answers as he watches the young cadet walk away.

 

“Roy…”

 

“Not now, Hughes.” His friend’s voice is low, quiet, and defeated.

 

Sighing, Maes places his hands on Roy’s shoulders and begins to guide him towards the med tent, thankfully the opposite direction of where Hawkeye had gone off.

 

“An old friend?” Maes questions as they walk across the desert sand. Roy’s head drops even more.

 

“You could say that.”

 

Maes doesn’t push.


	2. Bottle It Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His walls always seem to break around Riza Hawkeye...

Roy Mustang had always been inexplicably driven by his emotions.  When he was younger, he had worn his heart on his sleeve.  Anyone around him knew exactly what he was feeling.

 

This changed abruptly when his parents were killed in a car accident when he was 9 years old.  Rather than show even more emotion after the horrible accident that took his parents' lives, as was expected of a child his age, he began to bottle it up, and keep it inside, only to be let out when he deemed appropriate.

 

Of course, it's not that he isn't driven by his emotions, he very much is, but he and he alone decides when they come out.  That is, unless someone he cares about is in the mix.

 

So it really doesn't surprise him that his walls crumble around Riza Hawkeye.

 

The first time he experiences the onslaught of emotions is shortly after Master Hawkeye passes away.  Riza stands before him, back bared in the fading evening light, and looking vulnerable, something that he's never known her as before.  He clenches his fists, trying to ignore how they shake and instead focus on the intense pain of his fingernails digging into his own flesh, the smell of the old books around them, the way the light is hitting the ground, anything but her and the damned tattoo on her back.

 

He can't come up with words, well none that he should say, anyways.  The only cohesive thought his mind can form is why.  Why didn't she tell him? Why a tattoo? Why her back? Why did her father do this to his own daughter? Why Riza? Why her? _Why_ _why_ _why_ …

 

He takes a shuddering step forward as he whispers the one thing that he can vocalize.

 

"Why."  His voice is low, stony, and he hopes fleetingly that she knows that it's not directed at her so much as it is to her dastardly father.

 

"I'm his daughter."  When she speaks, it's barely audible, but with surprising conviction.

 

"He has no right," he counters.

 

"He _had_ the ability," Riza corrects him.  The shaking from his clenched fists spreads through his arms to his shoulders.

 

"Not to…not t-to," Roy falters, trying in vain to calm his quaking body.  "No right to do what he did to you."

 

"Mister Mustang," she replies, her voice surprisingly steady.  Roy winces at the use of his last name.  "Even if he didn't have the right, he had the ability, and in the end, that is what makes all the difference."

 

"You're his _daughter_ ," Roy stressed the word as if it may help Riza come to a realization of how horrific this situation truly is.

 

"Yes," she says, nodding.

 

"He did this to you."  Another nod validates his statement.

 

"He put his notes on your back," his voice wavers once again.  She nods, this time with less conviction.

 

Roy pauses before his next sentence.

 

"You allowed it to happen…"  Silence.

 

"Riza," Roy starts again, but she cuts in.

 

"Yes."  It's not a defeated yes, it's simply a confirmation.

 

"Why?"  He's back to his original question.  The entire conversation and his entire world seems to be going in circles.

 

"I had no choice.  I wanted to help my father, I was eager to get his approval.  After my mother died…" she trails off.  "After my mother died, I no longer had a father.  I wanted that back.  I wanted him back.  I wanted a father again."

 

They lapse into silence again.

 

"When?"  It seems that the only questions Roy can form are the most simplistic, but simultaneously the most painful.

 

"Three winters ago…"

 

Roy does the math in his head.  Right now he's 20, she's 19… Three winters ago would put him at about 17, almost 18, and her at 16.

 

He feels sick.

 

"You didn't tell me."  Riza shakes her head.

 

"Why."  This is what seems to get her back to the present moment.

 

She slips on her blouse and does a few buttons so that she can turn around and face him modestly.  Her amber eyes drill into his.

 

"Because you didn't need to know."

 

It feels like a sucker punch to the gut.  He didn't need to know that she was going through this?

 

"Didn't need to know?" he repeats.  "I didn't need to know?"  The dam is breaking, Roy can feel it.  All this pent up frustration and sadness and anger is coming out and there's absolutely nothing he can do to stop it now.

 

"No," she replies, voice steady and gaze resolute.  "You didn't need to know."

 

"You're wrong."  His voice is still quiet, but the flame within it is growing hotter by the second.

 

"Am I?" Her gaze is steady.  He's not.

 

"Yes!  I would've helped you!" Roy is shouting now, but he can't stop it.  "I _should've_ helped you!"

 

"You couldn't!" she fires back, matching his volume with flashing eyes.  "There's nothing you could have done.  You couldn't have stopped it from happening, you couldn't have changed my mind, and you couldn't have prevented my father from loosing his.  There's nothing you could have done."

 

"I would've found some way…there has to be something I could've done differently," Roy is pacing now, trying to get a handle back on his swirling emotions.  "I could've learned things faster, I could've worked harder, helped more, hell he could've put the notes on me I-"

 

"Roy."  Riza's hand is on her shoulder and her voice is softer.  He swallows and looks at the floor, trying to ignore the fact that she called him by his given name for the first time months.  He takes a shuddering inhale.

 

"You have to trust me when I say there is literally nothing you could have done that would change where we are right now," she says.  "You were the perfect student, diligent, hard working, curious…his favorite student."

 

"Riza, I-"

 

"Would you please just listen?"  He stays silent.  "You did nothing wrong, and you've proven to me even more is that you're the one who I can entrust these secrets to, remember?  And if anything, the amount you are struggling with this just proves it more.  I can entrust Flame Alchemy to you, and that makes this worth it.  Because I know you'll do right by it, and I don't trust anyone more than I trust you."

 

Before he realizes what he's doing, Roy turns and envelops her in a tight hug.  He buries his face in her hair and squeezes her tightly.  After a beat of hesitation, her arms slide up around his back and she is holding him just as tightly, her face pressed against his chest.  A few moments later, Roy feels a wetness on his shirt.  With a jolt, he realizes that she's crying.  In all the time he's known her, years and years, he's never actually seen her cry.  He's heard her, sure, a couple of times behind her closed door when the thunder in the summer shakes the house.  But seen her? No.

 

He sighs and cradles her head in his hand, fighting back his own tears because she's too young to lose her father, she's too young to have this weight on her, she's too young to be going through this grief…they're both too young.

 

As the two sink to the floor, tears on both of their faces now, Roy promises himself that he'll do right by Riza Hawkeye.  He'll take the secrets she has entrusted him with and use them to make the world a better place.  It'll probably be difficult, most things are, but he knows that she'll be with him the whole way, and that makes it easier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay okay maybe in a few days I'll stop posting more than one update a day, but in the meantime, I can and I will. Spring Break is an amazing thing. Hope you guys like this! I'm enjoying working on this story!


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